STEVEN KUO: Africa could benefit from the new global balance of power

The winter Olympics are under way in Beijing. Spirited competition is seen not only on the ski slopes, but also on the field of international politics.

I have cherished memories from when Beijing held the summer Olympics in the summer of 2008. I had just completed my first year as a research student in St Andrews, on the back of a couple of years of working as a tour guide by day and applying for scholarships by night.

Once the professors had signed off on my modest progress and granted me the right to continue as a PhD candidate, I was able to finally take a blissful, carefree vacation in China. I spent the summer in the ancient city of Suzhou, only an hour by train from Shanghai and famous for thousands of years for silk production.

China was in a festive mood then — from train stations to department stores, Olympics fever was everywhere. The summer Olympics of 2008 was China’s coming-out party, it was China welcoming the world to Beijing and China joining the global family.

As much as the Olympics is not supposed to be about politics but about diversity and unity through sports, politicians have always leveraged it for maximum political gain. This winter Olympic Games has seen a “diplomatic boycott” led by the US, Australia, Britain and Japan, citing human rights violations.

In response, President Xi Jinping held a summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin hours before the opening ceremony on February 4. Russia and China firmed up their ever-closer relationship to what now appears to be a security alliance. They jointly declared a “new era” in the global order and that “friendship between the two states has no limits”.

While China did not back Russia’s war in Georgia in 2008, its invasion of Ukraine in 2014 or Russia’s annexation of the Crimea, China now recognises that Russia’s security concerns about Nato’s expansion are legitimate and must be addressed.

The two veto-wielding permanent members of the UN Security Council now stand shoulder to shoulder against Western security alliances — Nato in Europe and Aukus (Australia, UK and US) as well as the Quad (Japan, US, Australia and India) in the Asia-Pacific.

India, by the way, was duly slighted and withdrew participation by its Beijing embassies’ chargé d’affaires to the Olympics in protest when the Chinese regimental commander — who was injured during the infamous clash between the two sides in the Himalayan border region in 2020, where 20 Indian and four Chinese soldiers reportedly died — was selected as one of the Olympic torch bearers.

My view is that the world is finding a new balance of power, and this may not be all bad. It is possible that as Putin found backing from Xi last week, he has decided he has achieved his objective and can de-escalate the crisis in Ukraine.

French President Emmanuel Macron said after a five-hour meeting with Putin in Moscow on Monday that his Russian counterpart had undertaken not to escalate the Ukraine crisis and to pull back the Russian troops that have amassed in Belarus, to the north of Ukraine, after their military exercise is over.

The shifting global order will affect every country in the world, including SA. The decoupling of China and Russia from the US-led global order, and increasing military tensions, will affect African politics and business and thus requires careful navigation. From the African perspective, that the US has been the sole global superpower the past 30 years has not been all positive.

While it is good that most African countries are now democratic, China’s willingness to make loans for African infrastructure projects has highlighted the West’s biased attitude towards Africa — that the continent is ripe for aid, but not investment.

As was the case in the colonial era and during the Cold War, African governments and businesses must be politically savvy to play one external power off the other. The only difference is that African governments need to do this for the benefit of the people and not just themselves.

• Dr Kuo, a former lecturer at the Shanghai International Studies University in China, is adjunct senior lecturer in the University of Cape Town’s Graduate School of Business.